Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

Kathleen Rooney

Jun 2017 · Bolinda · Narrated by Xe Sands

1 review

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8 hr 17 min

Unabridged

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About this audiobook

'In my reckless and undiscouraged youth,' Lillian Boxfish writes, 'I worked in a walnut-paneled office thirteen floors above West Thirty-Fifth Street ...' She took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy’s to become the highest paid advertising woman in the country. It was a job that, she says, 'in some ways saved my life, and in other ways ruined it.' Now it’s the last night of 1984 and Lillian, 85 years old but just as sharp and savvy as ever, is on her way to a party. It’s chilly enough out for her mink coat and Manhattan is grittier now – her son keeps warning her about a subway vigilante on the prowl – but the quick-tongued poetess has never been one to scare easily. On a walk that takes her over 10 miles around the city, she meets bartenders, bodega clerks, security guards, criminals, children, parents and parents-to-be, while reviewing a life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak, illuminating all the ways New York has changed – and has not. A love letter to city life in all its guts and grandeur, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney paints a portrait of a remarkable woman across the canvas of a changing America: from the Jazz Age to the onset of the AIDS epidemic; the Great Depression to the birth of hip-hop. Lillian figures she might as well take her time. For now, after all, the night is still young.

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About the author

Kathleen Rooney is a poet and author whose novels include the bestseller Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (2017) and The Listening Room: A Novel of Georgette and Loulou Magritte (2018). She is the author of a number of other books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, including the essay collection For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs; her art-modelling memoir Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object; and the non-fiction book Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America. Her first poetry collection, Oneiromance (an epithalamion) won the 2007 Gatewood Prize from the feminist publisher Switchback Books. Rooney lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay. Her latest novel is Man Overboard! (2026).

Xe Sands is an award-winning narrator known for her authentic characterisations and intimate delivery. She has more than a decade of experience bringing stories to life through narration, performance and visual art, including recordings of Wonderland by Stacey D'Erasmo, The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro and Survival Lessons by Alice Hoffman. Sands has also been recognised for her engaging romance narrations and was named Most Impressive Narrator Discovery for titles such as Catch of the Day by Kristan Higgins and On Thin Ice by Anne Stuart.

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